


Consanguine

by moovelope



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Man eating penguins, Regeneration, gratuitous amounts of avocados, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moovelope/pseuds/moovelope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor meets his newest companion in the produce department.  It goes everywhere from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consanguine

It's strange to remember her as a stranger.  She’s only an attendant at a small grocery store on some corner in London.  Here he is, chasing after a small furry creature speeding around in a toy car.  He’s searching in the produce section when he bumps into her.  All he notices is her smile and the blue apron with the name DosSantos on the pocket.

"Do you like avocados?  Or just hiding underneath them?" she asks, gesturing to the display he is stooped under.  He whacks his head on the way up to look at her.

“Oh, you know, avocados are really interesting.  Don’t know if they’re a fruit or a vegetable, but why does it have to be either or?  Why can’t there just be a frejatable category to sort everything in?  We wouldn’t have to fight over whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable for four centuries then,” he rambles in reply, ducking under a rack of oranges.  He whips his sonic screwdriver out and pokes around a little bit on the floor.

“But fruits and vegetables have different benefits to them, how can you lump them up into one category?” she asks, stooping down next to him and looking under the display. 

“Easy, just tell people how awesome frejatable sounds, they’ll pick it up quick.” 

Oh, right there!  The Granticrack’s fuzzy head was just visible an aisle over, passing under the corn.

“What are you looking for, anyway?” the shop attendant asks.

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She gives him a bright smile, “Try me.”

She runs with him ten minutes later, racing towards the mayhem and explosions.  The rogue alien is caught, given back to his parents and all together everything ended up all right.

"Is it usually this fun?" she asks.

"Fun?  I wouldn’t call it fun, exactly." 

“What would you call it, then.”

He pauses and debates on what he should say.  After a moment, he looks her dead in the eye, all amusement gone from his face.  “It can be fun.  It can also be dangerous, exhausting, horrendous and a death wish.  I’ve had people follow after me and never come back home.  I’ve lost people.  I’ve had people regret coming with me so much that I wish I could take it all back and erase it for them.  If you come with me, I can’t guarantee anything.”

He watches her as this sinks in; it’s about time he gave a disclaimer to new companions.  He half wishes that she won’t come with him.  His past companions are freshly gone. He can't, he simply can't so soon after-

"I’ll just have to take care of myself, then."  Her face is set, confident.

She strides into the TARDIS like she owns it, and doesn’t look back.  She’s only slightly surprised by the interior.

"It’s so beautiful, Doctor," is all she says.  He finds that this is an acceptable reaction.

"So, where would you like to go...?" he realizes he doesn't even know this woman's first name.

"Uma. And wherever you can take me."

\----------

"So, Uma like the actress?"

"What?"

"I swear there's a popular actress around your time with that name."

"Doctor, don't you think there could be a better time for this?"

“A better time meaning when we’re not surrounded by flesh eating penguins with only a chair and sonic screwdriver to separate us from sardine hell?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

"Oh, right, yeah." the Doctor agrees and points the screwdriver down, resonating the ice beneath their feet.  They both scream as they fall, but it's followed soon by laughter (and running. Lots of running).

Uma is amazing.  She's bright, sweet, and can speak so fast that it sometimes leaves his head spinning.  She reminds him a bit of Donna.  She’s not as sharp with her tongue, but she certainly puts him in his place when he needs it (whether he thinks he needs it or not).  She, like Donna, learns everything so quickly.  She remembers the names of most of the planets and species they’ve met, knows what a few of the instruments on the dash of the TARDIS do, and figured out how to put his sonic screwdriver to different settings with some prolonged fiddling.

What he admires most about him, however, is how she has learned to read his moods. From his giddy laughter to his dark temper, she pulls through them all.  She knows just when to drag him off on another adventure, or when to sit down next to him and hold his hand.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really.  No."

"Ok then.  Can I talk?"

"It sure seems like it."

"I don't have any family left." he looks towards her; he hadn’t expected this line of conversation.  "They’re either dead or I got cut off from them.  You never asked who I was leaving behind, there was no one."

"You must have had friends, though."

"Oh, I did.  But I left them behind.  We drifted apart when I went to school, when I started to work.  I’d love to catch up with them again, but I fear it won’t be the same.  I’ve moved on in my life, and they’ve moved on in theirs.  They still love me, sure, but I'm just not as important to them anymore,” she says, staring at her hands instead of him.

"You can't know that,” he argues.

"Neither can you.  How many friends have you left behind? Do you think that they don't care about you anymore?"

"My friends are safer without me."

"That may be true, but I bet they miss you."

“That’s not the point.  It was time to leave them so that they could move on.  Grow up, live their lives."

"That’s a rather large decision to make on your own, don’t they get a say in anything?"she asks.  He sighs.

“I’m 1120 years old, I feel like I have the better perspective on things.”

She laughs, and he cracks a smile.  “One thousand years old?  No, never.  You don’t look a day over three hundred.”

“Oh you cheese ball, stop it,” he shoves her a little and she nearly falls over, still laughing.  She nudges him back.

“But really Doctor, it’s alright to miss your friends.  Maybe you can check on them once in awhile.  I would hate to be left behind.  That’s why I did the leaving.  But I think I’ll visit my friends again one day, just to catch up.  It will be wonderful.”

He nods, slowly.

And sometimes, very rarely, in between adventures and life saving and laughter and tears they fight.  It’s the worst when they fight, because Uma doesn't yell.  She doesn't huff or half heartedly avoid him. She looks at him with such rage and disappointment that he just freezes up inside.

"You didn't have to do that."

She’s standing next to the console, arms crossed.  He tries to avoid her gaze as he paces, instead absent mindedly brushing the soot off his jacket.

"It was a split second choice, if I hadn't blown up the power station the TARDIS would have melted from the inside out-"

"Did you _think_ of the consequences?  The smoke cloud that went up from that nuclear explosion is enough to choke the planet for millennia! You have killed _hundreds of thousands of people_."

"I can go back and fix it.  I can pick them all up, send for help-"

"With that level of radiation? You saw what happened around the explosion, that amount of radiation will ruin a ship in seconds."

"I can go back and change it."

"You know you can't."

"Just SHUT UP!” he finally explodes, “I know, I know I messed this up.  God, I messed this up,” he falls back into one of the chairs.  Really, there must have been another way.  His first thought had been to save the TARDIS.  All these years of compassion and saving lives and he’d still give it up for a bloody machine.

"You are so stupid.  So so stupid." she groans into her hands.  Clenching at her hair briefly she looks up again, gives him a piercing look of contempt and stalks back to her room.

Two hours later she comes back and holds him, crying into his shoulder.

"All of those people. Oh god,” she whispers.

"I know."

"I'm so sorry."  He hears the rest in her voice.  Sorry for being mad, sorry you had to do that, sorry that this had to happen at all.

"Don't be, I deserved it," is all he says.  She laughs wetly into his shoulder.  They stay like that for awhile, until one of them decides that there are other lives that can be saved, so what was the use in sitting around and being sad?

And sometimes, more often than Uma getting mad at him, he finds himself losing his temper at her.

"What was that?"

“ _That_ was amazing!” she says, laughing as she twirls around the TARDIS.  “Did you see the look on their faces when I pulled out that gun?  It wasn’t even loaded!”

“No, Uma, that wasn’t amazing.  That was stupid.  That was stupidly dangerous!  You can’t just go running towards a platoon of fully armed Jaxarexes and talk your way through it!”

“I can and I did.  What would you rather I do?”

“Be _careful_!  Don’t put your life on the line like that!  You’re human; you don’t know how fragile you are!”

“I can make my own decisions, Doctor.  I did what I thought was best.  And, because of what I did, we got out of there alive, and rescued the town from continued imprisonment.  I’m sorry I didn’t wait around for you to save the day!”

“You aren’t expendable!”

“You aren’t either!  Doctor, I should be telling _you_ to be more careful.  What with all the trouble you just willingly throw yourself into.  At least I don’t have a death wish!”

“I have died far too many times to have a death wish, Uma,” he says, shaking with anger.  Uma’s strumming with fury too, from the looks of it.  “Let’s just, take a break and calm down.”

She gives him one last look of vehemence before turning around and heading for her room.  The Doctor leans heavily on the TARDIS controls, taking long deep breaths.  She was right, though.  He most likely would have done the exact same thing in her position.

And then one day they're chasing down The Silence on a dead planet and they're running for their lives and there's a good chance one of them isn't making it out of here.  There's shooting and pleading and explosions and then suddenly it's over.  The two of them have won.  They've gotten past the original question, past The Silence and have made it through alive. Well, sort of.

"Oh, oh god Doctor.  Oh no," Uma is murmuring, holding his stomach as it pumps out more blood.

"TARDIS," he's able to grunt.  She drags him the quick distance and pulls him inside, laying him on the floor.  His breath is ragged.  He's almost dead.  Just a few seconds more and the regeneration will kick in.

"It's ok, it's going to be alright," she tells him, brushing through his hair. "Just let go.  Go on.  Let go."

And with a sigh he does.  The energy from the transformation hauls him to his feet and he changes.  The golden energy flows out of his hands and whips across his face, changing adjusting shrinking widening.

After a minute the Doctor relaxes, feeling both energized and exhausted at the same time.

"There we go, just fine," Uma says.  Except, Uma hadn't opened her mouth and the Doctor was pretty sure he had said those words.  He walks around the console to look at his reflection in the computer screen.

Her reflection.

He sees Uma wearing a ripped and bloodied tweed jacket and bow tie, now far too large.  Uma, his-her Uma, looks over from the other side of the TARDIS.

"There we go.  How's it feel?" she asks, smiling a bit.

"I...I...shorter."

"We've been short before,” she argues.

"Never a woman, before.  Oh god.  Uma.  Your _name_!!  I am an idiot!!"

The Doctor sits heavily into one of the seats, head in her hands. "Uma, Uma DosSantos.  Una Dos.  One two."

"Twelve.  I thought it was pretty funny."  The Doctor cracks a small smile.

"Well, alright, it kind of is.  But, you're human. I would have recognized a Timelord." The Doctor says, looking up at Uma, no, herself.

"Chameleon arch.  Modified it to only affect DNA instead of memory."

"How is that even possible?"

"I'll show you, don't worry."

"Oh... So...all of that was me.  That's rather depressing."  Her future self frowns.

"You thought you had gotten a wonderful companion, one who knew you the best and understood you.  You were happy, weren’t you?"

"I was.  I guess I needed that, after Amy and Rory."

"Yeah, we did.  I don’t think I would have made it without Uma, looking back at it all.  Speaking of, we need to get you sorted."

"Right this second?  I'm fresh off of regeneration,” the Doctor says wearily, gesturing down to her blood covered suit.

"The chameleon arch will hurt less now than it will in a day or so for you.  That regeneration energy will keep a bit of the pain away.  And don’t forget, I need to switch back to Timelord."

"So, you're off to some new adventures."

"Yes, finally,” she smiles.  Her future self skips back to her room, coming back a moment later with a pocket watch.

They crank the machine up and try to ignore each other’s screaming.  Her future self is taking deep breaths and clutching her chest, enjoying the renewed feeling of two hearts.  The Doctor is short of breath with just the one.

"Are you ready?" they ask at the same time, with the same voice.  They both laugh as they set the dials on the TARDIS for London.

The new human Uma DosSantos straightens her shirt and skirt, eyeing the door.

"Be good to him, alright?" The future Doctor says, giving her a kind look.

Uma straightens her back and smiles.  And damn is it hard to tell it's anything but genuine.

"Will do."

And there he is.  It’s strange seeing this overly familiar man with these new eyes.  With her old tweed jacket and bowtie (she doesn't miss the bowtie, she finds).  To him, she is only just a stranger. And so, she asks him the important question.

"Do you like avocados?  Or just hiding underneath them?"

**Author's Note:**

> And that's that. If you catch any mistakes, spelling or otherwise, could you give me a heads up? Spell check can only do so much and I have a horrendous habit of writing things at 2 in the morning. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
